


Since U Been Gone

by MythicalCatie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Cancer, Mentions of Death, Past Child Abuse, Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-07-10 08:48:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6976204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MythicalCatie/pseuds/MythicalCatie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer's been in his cage for far too long. Crowley's reigned longer than he ever should have. Now it's time for Lucifer to reclaim what is rightfully his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was initially posted on a now abandoned Supernatural Tumblr blog, but was written by me, so I'm reposting it here. If I'm not mistaken, this was my first Supernatural work. Enjoy!

Day one thousand, seven hundred, and seventy-three without the love of your life. He’d been in his own personal prison for, in Earth time, four years now. After the apocalypse of 2009 and 2010, he was gone. Locked away. Unreachable. You missed your husband, and you missed him horribly. Who would miss the man that you're married to? After all, he **is** the almighty Lucifer. The answer to that question? Why, you, of course. He might be a complete asshole to everybody else, but to you… to you, Lucifer shows kindness. He shows compassion. He gives you unmeasurable amounts of love. Lucifer is caring, sweet, and treats you how he thinks you deserve to be treated, also known as with the utmost amount of respect. If only people could understand that Lucifer wasn’t all evil, that there was a pure, good part of him, then maybe you’d be in his arms right now. Maybe you wouldn’t be without him.

Day one thousand, seven hundred, and sixty-five in this literal Hell. Well, in this world’s time, year five hundred and eighty. A week and a day after you lost Lucifer, you were banished here for a forever. On the first day of your last week on Earth, news had spread that Lucifer had been imprisoned and that the Queen of the Underworld was unprotected. By day three, you were captured by Crowley, who is now the new, and hopefully temporary, ruler of Hell. For the four days after that, you were kept in a dirty, grimy, dark storage space. You were chained up and not fed, not allowed out. On the seventh day, Crowley came up with a vile, inhumane, villainous plot. On the eighth day, he implemented it.

On the eighth day that you were in captivity, you were taken to Hell. Obviously, you had been there before, being as you were married to Lucifer. But usually, you liked to stay on Earth. You were only in Hell when Lucifer was there, so that you could be with him. When you were present in Hell, you barely left your spot on Lucifer’s lap. When you two had to walk, you were always holding onto his hand or arm. Hell was a scary place, even if you technically were the Queen of it. But now, you weren’t holding your Luci’s hand the entire time. You weren’t fearless. You didn’t feel protected or safe, not one bit. This time, you were smack dab in the middle of your worst nightmare: your childhood. You didn’t know how Crowley possessed the knowledge that your childhood was your worst fear. A very limited amount of people knew that. The people that abused you and your spouse. That was it. You didn’t know how the ex-crossroads dickbag had a clue, but he did.

On the eighth day of your capture, you were placed into your own specially customized Hell. For the past five hundred and eighty years, it has been your childhood. Every day, every hour, every minute, every second, you were subject to the never ending terror that was your early life. You endured constant beatings, an abusive father raping you whenever he damn well pleased, and an inescapable depression. For five hundred and eighty years, you had been owned. For five hundred and eighty years, you had cried. For five hundred and eighty years, you had screamed at the top of your lungs, pleading for this nightmare to end. For five hundred and eighty years, you had ached. For five hundred and eighty years, you had suffered. For five hundred and eighty years, your LuciBear hadn’t protected you. For five hundred and eighty years, you had been alone.

Why were you down here? You had never done an evil thing in your life, despite your title as Satan’s Missus. You made it a point to not get involved in Lucifer’s affairs. Demons, monsters of any kind that he was in command of, that was none of your business. Sure, Luc would tell you about his adventures if you asked, but you’d never do anything to hurt anybody. You knew what it felt like to be hurt. You didn’t care to inflict that pain on anybody else.

The answer as to why you were in Hell, it was very simple, actually. Since your husband couldn’t do anything about it from the cage, Crowley used your torture as a way to kill Lucifer on the inside. The new ‘King’ understood that it was one of the only things that emotionally injured Lucifer, maybe **the** only thing, and it hurt the most. He knew that his baby was alone, scared, and wounded, and he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. It was horrible.

As of current moment, you were in the middle of being raped by some demon posing as your father. This soulless… this soulless, heartless mutation was imitating your barely-human dad. This thing had the same messy brown hair, same voice…the demon had perfected the form, right down to his ice cold blue eyes.

Tears streamed down your banged up, bruised, bloody, and once beautiful face. Your hair was ratty and your cheeks puffed. You were way past rational thinking. You were way past believing, or at least remembering, that the thing that was doing you harm was not actually your father. It wasn’t, but then again, in Hell, you never knew. [your father’s first and last name]’s soul definitely had not gone to Heaven, so it was possible that a demon had enlisted him to do the damage. You just couldn’t tell anymore unless the demon reverted back to its true form in front of you afterward.

Your voice was sore from over half a millennium of constant screams, but even still, you let out your loudest. How could you not? It was terrifying beyond words and agonizing as well.

“STOP IT! STOP IT, I’M SORRY! I’M SO SORRY!”

You didn’t have anything, as of present day, to be sorry for. Not at all. You were a good girl. You were a good person who just kept to herself and never did anything wrong. As of August 8th, 1981, however, you had a million things to be apologetic of. Breaking one of your mommy’s old plates. Forgetting to clean up your toys before school. Needing help with your homework. Repeating a bad word that your daddy said to you to your teacher. It wasn’t your fault. The plate was an accident. China is easily breakable by a six year old. You wouldn’t have touched it if you knew that it was mommy’s. You missed mommy. You wanted her back. Daddy was nice before mommy went to Heaven. It wasn’t your fault that you didn’t pick up your toys. Daddy rushed you out of the house in the morning. He told you that if you didn’t leave, he’d break your arm and still make you go to school. You wanted to pick up your toys, you did. Daddy just didn’t give you a chance. It wasn’t your fault that you needed help with your homework. Your teacher told the class to ask for help because she only started teaching that lesson that day, and she knew it was hard when you didn’t know. It wasn’t your fault that you knew the bad word. It wasn’t your fault that your daddy said it all the time when he got angry. It wasn’t your fault. It. Wasn’t. Your. Fault.

You endured a total of thirteen and a half years of pure Hell before you even knew that such a place truly existed. It wasn’t fair, your life. As crazy as it sounds, it only got better when you met Lucifer. Falling in love with Luci made your life infinitely better. Not perfect, but better. A lot better.

On January 11th, 1994, you met your husband. It was your birthday. You were nineteen years old. On April 8th, 1994, Lucifer asked you to be his girlfriend. You were nineteen years old. On January 11th, 1995, you told Lucifer you loved him for the first time. You were twenty years old. On March 23rd, 1996, you opened up to Lucifer about your past. You were twenty-one years old. On October 31st, 1997, Lucifer proposed to you Italy. You were twenty-two years old. On January 1st, 2000, you and Lucifer wed. You were twenty-four years old. On January 11th, 2000, Lucifer immortalized you so that your wedding vows would hold true and you really would be together for all eternity. You were twenty-five years old.

In Hell, you weren’t a soul, like everybody else was. You were a living, breathing human being. You just couldn’t die was all. No matter what they did to you, you lived. You were grateful that your Luci had immortalized you, because it meant that you’d never have to leave him, but right now, it was way more of a curse than it was a gift. At the moment, all it was was a curse.

About five hundred and seventy-nine years ago, you wished you were dead. You wished that you wouldn’t have to live in any world anymore. You wished that you could just… just have your life ended. However, that was all about to change.

In the time you’d been in Hell, you’d been kept in the dark about a lot of things. You never left your personal Hell, and rarely did any outside knowledge come in.

You were unaware about the whereabouts of people you once knew. You didn’t know who the President of the United States was. You didn’t know if any of the bands you liked had toured or put out new music. You didn’t know if any wars had ended or begun. You did know a few things, however. You knew that your baby was suffering. You knew that he was still stuck in his cage. You knew that he knew that you were in Hell, that you were suffering. You knew that Crowley was holding that over Lucifer’s head.

But there was, on top of all of the other things you were unaware of, another thing. Another, much bigger thing than Lance Bass, your favorite member of NSYNC, getting married.

Lucifer had gotten out of his cage.

It happened yesterday. Yesterday in Hell, a few hours ago on Earth. Naturally, he was now on his way to save you from your distress.

“Stop,” you bawled, shaking violently, “J-Just st-stop! I di-didn’t do a-anything w-wrong!” Please.

“Of course you did, pumpkin. You existed,” the demon answered in that low, sinister voice your father once possessed.

When would this end?!

Just then, the door to your old bedroom was kicked open. Hard. Oh goodness gracious. What was it now? Another demon posing as a friend of your father’s? Crowley? You didn’t know. Well, that was until you turned your head and saw…

Lucifer.

Oh no. Oh no. Those assholes! They’re such dicks, posing as him!

What you didn’t know, however, was that that was the **real** Lucifer. You weren’t informed that he had escaped. Nobody was.

As Lucifer, who you thought was fake, a simple, yet cruel, illusion, entered the room, you protested even harder than you had been just a moment previously. This was not happening.

“N-No, no. D-Don’t. P-Please don’t. Anything but this. A-Anything but being Luc. Pl-Please! I-I’ve had enough!”

With that, the demon that was playing the role of your father got off of you.

“I’ll let you take this over,” he said to Lucifer, thinking that he was posing as well.

“Oh, thank you. Wonderful.”

Your trembles got worse and worse with each second that passed. However, you didn’t expect what happened next.

Lucifer just stared at the demon. Just stared. He stared hard enough and that killed the thing.

That still didn’t convince you that he was real. Maybe he was just doing that to get the demon out of the way so that he could be completely alone when he hurt you. Of course, your mind was clouded and you didn’t realize that a run-of-the-mill demon didn’t have the ability to annihilate somebody that way.

Carefully, Lucifer made his way over to you.

“Hey there, sweetheart,” your currently blue-eyed husband greeted softly. “You okay?” He knew you weren’t, but just thought he’d ask.

With great struggle, you sat up and backed away to the corner of the bed. You wrapped your bruised arms around your thin frame and held yourself tightly.

“G-Get away from me!” you instructed. “S-Stay away from me!”

“Why, honey? Why would I stay away from you? I thought you’d be happy to see me,” Lucifer admitted. “I’ve been gone for almost six hundred years, dearest.”

You should have known that they’d use this against you at one point or another.

“S-Stay away from me. Y-You’re not my L-L-Luh-Luci.”

You couldn’t believe that this was happening. This was cruel. Very cruel. Yes, even for Crowley.

“ _Oh no. They’ve brainwashed my baby_ ,” Lucifer thought silently. If you didn’t believe it, he’d have to prove it to you.

“You think I’m not Lucifer, darling? You think it’s not me? Well, I have some memories to prove to you that I’m real.”

What memories? Probably just common knowledge. He’s probably just a throw-away demon who knows nothing. Even still, you decided to listen. You didn’t know why, but that’s what you did.

“Your full name is Y/F/N. Your birthday is January 11th, 1975. You’re afraid of the dark, so you never want to sleep without me. We met at a bar in California on your birthday in 1994. You had a fake ID because you weren’t twenty-one yet. You were only nineteen. We had our first date in Paris, but we had to fly on a plane instead of teleport there, because really, telling a girl that you’re the ruler of Hell is at least third date material.” Lucifer loved to joke. “You just thought that I was a really rich guy because we flew to Paris for date one. For our first anniversary as a married couple, which was January 1st, 2001, by the way, we spent a month in the Caribbean. Your favorite show is Full House, that sitcom from the eighties. We have watched the entire series now at least five times over. One time, when I was trying to make you hot chocolate, I left the milk unattended on the stove for too long and it boiled over. You laughed at me. You thought it was funny that I screwed something so simple up. You want kids, but we’re still thinking over the consequences. I’m happy to give you them, but you know that you have to be a billion times set on it because of the pain it’ll cause you later on.” What Lucifer meant by that was that your children would be half mortal, which meant that they’d age regularly and would eventually die. You would have to live through that. “You love cuddling, and your favorite band is that pop-punk one, All Time Low. We’ve seen them literally over a thousand times, and-”

You were convinced. This was definitely the man that you married. This was Lucifer. Nobody else could know the things that he was telling you. He was back!

When you realized that that was the case, you started crying again. Hard. He was back. He was really back!

“L-L-Lu-Luci,” you choked out, holding your arms out for him shakily.

“Hey, hon.”

Lucifer leaned over and picked you up carefully. You immediately hid your face in his chest and bawled into his shirt.

“Hey, hey. Shh, it’s alright. I’m here now,” he soothed, beginning to rock you back and forth. “Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore, princess.”

“L-Luc, it was t-t-tuh-terrible. I-It hu-hurt so much,” you told him.

The sound of your crying broke Lucifer’s heart. All of his emotions were in ruins at your pain.

“I know. I know, love,” he whispered softly. “But never again, I swear. For all of eternity, you’ll never be back here. In fact, let's get out of here right now.”

You nodded a little, wanting to go anywhere else. Anywhere. You’d rather be anywhere but here, and you trusted Lucifer to take you somewhere safe.

Luci carefully shifted your weight and carried you out of your “bedroom”, then out of the house. Once you left the house, you were free from that Hell in particular, but still in the general Underworld.

“Okay, okay. Now, all we have to do is get to the exit, and then we’ll be out. Then we can go home and calm down, alright? Deal?”

You nodded against the archangel in response, laying your head on him.

About halfway to complete freedom, Lucifer stopped moving.

You peeked up at your husband with your big, formally lovely, [color of your eyes] eyes. Now, they were simply empty, exhausted, no longer shining. “L-Lucifer?”

“Wooonderful,” he said sarcastically.

“L-Lucifer, wh-what’s w-wrong?” you asked unsteadily.

“Nothing’s wrong, my darling. Just… I just need you to sit down for a second.”

With that, Lucifer set you down in a nearby chair.

Immediately, you tried to grab onto him again. You were scared. You tried to beg him not to let you go, but he simply untangled your balled up fists from his tee shirt. Next, however, you realized why he put you down.

“Well hello there, Lucifer. Didn’t expect you back so soon.”

Crowley.

“Well, you know, I figured half a millennium and then some was enough time to be rotting away.”

“How did you get out? That cage is you proof,” the demon asked, amazed. Lucifer was some kind of Houdini if one was ever seen.

“Don’t worry about that,” Lucifer laughed. A sinister laugh. “Now I understand that you did some major damage to my girl in my absence?”

Yes, yes. Very major damage.

“That would be correct. Why do you mention it?” Crowley clarified.

“Just one second,” Lucifer seethed before turning to you. With the change of direction, the softness in his voice came back momentarily.

“My darling, would you mind covering your eyes for a moment? I don’t want you to see what’s about to happen.”

Right away, you obeyed and covered your eyes. You knew that you weren’t going to want to see what was going to happen next. Lucifer, the man who loved you more than anything had just been put into a room with the thing that hurt you for five hundred and eighty years. The sight was going to be anything but pretty.

“Thank you honey,” he acknowledged gently.

You could tell when Lucifer turned back to Crowley by the fact that a moment later, his voice was cold, heartless.

“I mention it, scum, because that’s my girl. You touched my girl. You are not allowed to touch **my** girl. Key word. Mine.”

The demon that stood opposite Lucifer rolled his eyes.

“And you think you can boss me around, tell me what to do?”

Your husband had a moment of silence. Not because he realized that he was wrong, because he wasn’t, but he just needed some time to absorb the pure stupidity that was spewing from Crowley’s mouth.

“Yes, actually,” Lucifer responded. “I do think that I can tell you what to do. As a matter of fact, I **know** that I can. I created your kind. I created demons. Although, I didn’t expect to come out with garbage such as yourself, I’ll admit. I didn’t expect for some of you to be so… so moronic, idiotic. I didn’t expect for some of you to possess such stupidity. I didn’t expect you to have enough stupidity as to **torture** my **wife**. I presume that you didn’t think of the consequences of that action!”

Crowley had a rather smug, amused look on his face while Lucifer spoke. He was the type of person, for lack of a better word, who didn’t care if Lucifer had a bone to pick with him. He’d **still** be an asshole.

Lucifer knew that he didn’t have any physical weapons on him, since he had just gotten out of his cage, but he also possessed an unimaginable amount of strength and power, even without things that he could hold. He didn’t **need** physical weapons.

You flinched when you heard a very loud, literally thunderous smacking sound. It shook the ground beneath you. At that moment, you knew that you would never want to be a person that Luci was mad at. Not that he would ever even **think** about hitting you. He would never. He would never entertain the notion. It would never even cross his mind. It’s just that you’d never want to be somebody else, and somebody else that your husband had a beef with. 

“Wipe that fucking smile off of your mouth!” Lucifer bellowed, packing a powerful punch square in Crowley’s ugly face.

You uncovered your eyes momentarily, but only to cover your ears. Then, you shut those eyes once more. You didn’t want to see it, and you didn’t want to hear it, either.

Currently, you were shaking and crying once more. You hated it when Lucifer yelled, even if it wasn’t at you. He’s never yelled at you, actually. Well, before you opened up to him. After that, though, yelling was no more. Maybe once after that point, and he felt terrible for weeks afterward. 

When Crowley attempted to fight back, however, is when Lucifer really got pissed.

“No. NO! She couldn’t, why should you be able to?!”

“Lucifer, come on-” Crowley tried in his disgusting British accent.

The next thing you heard was an extremely heavy thump. Lucifer had knocked Crowley’s lights out with no effort at all.

“L-Luci?” you asked shakily. “C-C-Can I-I l-look now?”

“Yes, darling. You can look now,” he confirmed gently, uncovering your ears for you. With that, you opened your eyes.

In one motion, Lucifer swept you up in his arms. Almost instantly, you laid your head on his shoulder once again.

“You ready to leave now, baby girl?”

Of course you were.

“Y-Yeah.”

A few minutes later, you were completely out of Hell, and with a simple thought, you were back home in California with Lucifer.

Tears still rolled down your cheeks, and even though you tried to stop them, you couldn’t. It was too hard.

Lucifer sat on the nearest piece of furniture, a couch, and held you in his lap.

He rocked you carefully back and forth, running his fingers through your hair.

“Hey, hey. Shh, shh. Look, sweetie, we’re home. We’re home in Cali, and it’s all over. That’s never happening to you ever again, I’ll be sure of it.” When Lucifer rose again, he would do a lot worse to Crowley than he did today.

You trembled roughly against your archangel, clinging to him tightly.

“I-I-It was s-so sc-sc-scuh-scary, a-and you weren’t the-there, a-and-”

Lucifer cut you off almost immediately, as he knew that you would start to hyperventilate if you continued to talk.

“Yes, yes. I know, beautiful. I know. Listen, I promise you that it won’t ever happen again, and I promise that the ones that hurt you, when I get back down there, will pay for what they did to you. I promise you that.”

“L-LuciBear?” you whispered in a timid, broken voice.

Lucifer looked down at you and listened intently, ready to hear what you had to say.

“Do you lo-lo-love me any l-luh-less for what h-happened? D-Did my worth-worthless meter s-s-skyrocket?”

Lucifer paused for a moment. He just couldn’t believe what had just come out of your mouth.

“Absolutely not. I love you the same, if not more, as when we were separated. You are the most wonderful, amazing, perfect human being I have ever met, and that’s saying alot, considering how much I hate this creation of God’s in particular. You, my gorgeous girl, are not worthless. You did nothing wrong, and I love you so, so much. I love you.” 

Luci gently kissed the top of your head, smiling a little bit at you.

You grinned shakily up at him and spoke very softly in return.

“I l-love you, too.”


	2. Chapter 2

Day number twenty-five back with the love of your life, Lucifer. It had been twenty-five Earth days since your saving, and twenty-five days since the prison break of your husband. It had also been twenty-five days of you sitting around pantsless, wearing nothing but a tee shirt of Lucifer’s, marathoning your entire Netflix queue. You had done barely anything else but just… just sit there, or lay there, on your couch or in bed, numb. You had gotten maybe a total of seven hours of sleep in the time that you had been back. Every time you would fall into DreamLand, you’d have a nightmare that’d startle you awake and you wouldn’t want to close your eyes again. To combat that, you made sure to stay hopped up on 5 Hour Energy and coffee. Lucifer, being an archangel and not being required to nourish himself with normal human functions such as sleep, using the bathroom, or eating, never left his spot next to you. He wouldn’t. Lucifer couldn’t bring himself to get up, except when he had to relocate rooms to stay with you. He wasn’t just going to stand by and let his baby be alone. He understood that you were numb, and that you didn’t say much or show emotion. However, Lucifer took that to mean that you were currently dead inside. That was one hundred percent true. He also knew that there would come a moment, sooner rather than later, that you would burst into tears and have a mental breakdown. Your spouse wanted to be there when that happened, so that he could take you in his arms and comfort you. He wasn’t going to let you fly solo. Not with this. Not ever.

Quietly, you crawled into your Luci’s lap and wrapped your arms around him. You’d been doing that a lot lately, just to be able to know that he was there. It was soothing to know that you could touch him, and to actually feel him. It was because you hadn’t been able to do that for so long. Now? Now, it was the only thing that you ever wanted to do.

Lucifer held you tightly, pulling you closer to his body, as close as he could get you. He kissed your forehead gently and laid his head on yours.

For the next fourteen and a half straight hours, you marathoned the medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” while laying on your husband’s chest or sitting on his lap. For that entire fourteen and a half hours, for more than half of the day, the only noise in the house was your surround sound system, and the only visual was that of Sandra Oh, T.R. Knight, and Patrick Dempsey’s faces, among others. Except for the hustle and bustle of the fictional location of Seattle Grace Hospital, your house was completely silent. It was a peaceful quiet, not an eerie one. It was comfortable. The coexistence between you and your spouse wasn’t strained. It didn’t feel bad or weird that you hadn’t said a word to him for almost fifteen hours, that the pair of you had just been laying there the entire time. It actually felt nice. It felt good that you could simply be together without having to speak or move. You could just… be. And that’s just exactly what you needed at the moment.

At the fifteen hour, five minute mark, however, you drifted off to sleep. You had finally crashed from your second caffeine high of the day, and you were absolutely exhausted. For three weeks and four days, you had been fighting sleep. You didn’t want to do it. Sleep, something that used to be one of your favorite things in the world, had now become one of the things that terrified you the most in this world. It was a horrible thing that you didn’t want to have to endure, but one that you had to, due to your human status. It was a requirement. What used to be such a release for you now scared you half to death. You’d been having nightmares ever since you got back from Hell. They were about things like Crowley, losing your Luci, and even what was happening to Lucifer while you two were apart. You wouldn’t know, because you weren’t told, but you assumed that it was horrid. You knew enough about what went on in Hell for your brain to supply some extremely gruesome scenarios. That’s why you hadn’t been getting very much sleep. You’d been trying to stay away from the visuals that haunted you every time you were unconscious. It was easier for you to be strung out on caffeine and a medical drama for ten and a half days, the amount of days since your last rest, than to watch the things that went on for those very long, very disturbing five hundred and eighty years. Even though you were sleep deprived and very, very sad deep down, it made you feel… better. It was something that you could control. You couldn’t control the past four years of your life, what went on in Hell. You couldn’t control the fact that your LuciBear was taken away from you and you couldn’t see him, feel him, or talk to him for almost half a decade. You couldn’t control the reality that you were powerless in that situation. However, now that you were back, you could control certain things. You could control what and when you ate, if you ate. You could control what you watched, where you watched it. You could control if you took a shower. You could control which pajamas you wore after said shower, or if you wore nothing at all. You could control if and when you slept. You’d be damned if you didn’t take advantage of the control that you had regained since your being saved. Granted, sometimes, like now, you accidentally fell asleep without noticing, but that’s not always what happened. Also, to be fair, you had been awake for over a week.

When you had finally fallen asleep, Lucifer kissed the top of your head and carefully reached for a blanket, covering you with it. He was very cautious in his movements, so that you wouldn’t shift when he did. Not that you would wake up anyway. After all, this was the first time you had slept in two hundred and fifty two hours. That may damn well have been a world record for all he knew, and you’d most likely be out for a couple of days. A little shifting of weight wasn’t going to do anything to wake you up. An earthquake probably wouldn’t at this point in time. Your husband just liked to be considerate and careful due to the possibility, however small, that it’d wake you up or disturb you in any way. Luckily, as expected, you didn’t stir or reopen your eyes when Lucifer reached for and placed a blanket over the pair of your bodies. Fortunately, you stayed asleep. He knew that you definitely needed to stay unconscious. You had been awake for so long that you had started to seriously hallucinate. For days, Lucifer tried to get you to close your eyes, but you wouldn’t. Now, you finally did, and he was, for that, forever grateful.

Lucifer laid with you on top of him the entire time you were asleep. He wanted to be there with you in case of any problems or for when you woke up. You slept straight through the first twenty-six hours. You rested as still as stone on your spouse’s chest. You slept without visuals, without dreams. It was just darkness, was all. Your body was just focused on recharging after all of the things that you had done to it that month. It had been through a lot. However, after you hit the twenty-six hour mark, your brain became more active than it had been before. After twenty-six hours of a blissful dead sleep, you were thrown into a dream sequence. A nightmare, of course. You had more bad, scary dreams than not, usually. For the first four hours after your brain started dreaming, you slept right through it. Still, you didn’t move or stir. Not that you didn’t want to, because you did. Those dreams were horrifying. It was just that, well, you couldn’t. Your brain may have been awake and running, but your body, on the other hand, didn’t have the strength or energy. It was so worn out from not sleeping in so long, and from all of the abuse it took for such a prolonged time frame, that it didn’t want to wake you up. It was too weak to even try. You were in need of a light coma, frankly, and your body knew it. So, on and off for that four hours, you were silently suffering through recollections of atrocious memories. They were ones that you’d just like to shove out of your brain and not have to think about or remember ever again. They were ones about Crowley-reigned Hell, and about Hell before you even knew that such a place existed. They were about memories from your past, from your childhood. Things that you’d give anything and everything to just… forget about. Well, maybe not everything. Anything but your Luci. You’d never give up your Luci. He was your rock. He was all of your strength. Anything else, however, you were willing to forfeit for a clean memory, or, better yet, good memories of your childhood.

You’d love a childhood. You’d love to live in a world where you’d grown up well off. You’d love a childhood where your mom didn’t die. You’d love a childhood where your father didn’t beat and rape you day in and day out. You’d love a childhood where you were allowed to play with the other children that lived in the neighborhood. You’d love a childhood where you didn’t have to cover up bruises, scratches, and bite marks every day before you left the house. You’d love a childhood where you didn’t prematurely start your period due to sexual activity at a young age. You’d have loved to come out of your childhood free of any emotional scars imposed on you by your parents, whether they be the indirect ones from your mom, or the intentional ones from your father. You’d love to have been able to have your parents meet your boyfriend, fiancée, and soon husband. You’d have loved to have them at your wedding. You’d have loved to have your father walk you down the aisle and give you away. You’d have loved and would have been happy to be a daddy’s girl. You’d had loved all of those things. Due to circumstance, though, you couldn’t. You just couldn’t. Instead, you received a lifetime of internal struggle and suffering. It wasn’t fair. It just. wasn’t. fair.

For a very long time, you didn’t understand. You didn’t understand why you had been dealt such a bad hand of cards. You didn’t understand why your mom was taken away from you. You didn’t understand why your dad became a monster. You didn’t understand why you were abused in every sense of the word for over a decade. You didn’t understand why you had lost both of your parents to an unknown force fueled by anger and despair. You didn’t understand how your father, once a loving, caring, kind, and considerate man, became such a cruel, callous, uncompassionate, child hater after your mom was gone. You didn’t understand why you weren’t escorted to the daddy-daughter dances, or why you weren’t allowed to buy flowers from the Mother's Day plant sale that your elementary school held on an annual basis. You didn’t understand why your father no longer gave you hugs, read you bedtime stories, watched TV with you in his lap, or referred to you as his princess, his baby girl. You didn’t understand why his favorite nicknames for you were now vile obscenities that even the dirtiest truck driver would gasp at. You just didn’t get it. You just didn’t understand why, or how. Not one bit.

As you got older, however, as you grew, you began to grasp the concept. You began to understand. You understood that your mom died because she had cancer. You understood that she was a very sick woman who was in a lot of pain. You understood that she fought as hard as she possibly could, but that the cancer broke her. The cancer in your mommy defeated her, and she couldn’t have saved herself, even with all of her efforts. Nothing could have saved her with how bad it was. You understood why your father became the way that he was for the majority of your childhood. You understood that he too was in pain. You understood that your father was suffering just as much emotionally as you mother was physically. You understood that he had lost his wife. You understood that he lost the mother of his only daughter, of his only child. You understood that he was grief-stricken, depressed. You understood that he was even furious at the disease that took his one true love away from him. You also understood that you looked and acted a lot like your mother. You understood that your father saw so much of her in you. You understood that now, every time he looked at his princess, the younger embodiment of his dead wife was gazing back up at him. You understood that he couldn’t bare to stare you in the face without wanting to burst out in tears. So, he replaced that sadness, that longing, that yearning, with rage and hostility. Your father replaced the need to have your mother in his arms with the ability to smack the representation of her, the symbol that she wasn’t coming back, upside the head so hard that it was knocked unconscious for three days. You’d come to understand that he did that, that he hurt you, because he needed so badly to escape the haunting fact that his wife was six feet under the ground and never coming up again. You definitely understood. You couldn’t relate, but you understood. You didn’t think it was right, but you understood. You just wished that it didn’t have to be that way. You wished that you could have had a good childhood, complete with the freshly painted white picket fence and the family dog. Instead, what you got was an iron cage that you were stuck in, sometimes for up to twenty-three hours in the day, and a collar around your neck that made **you** feel like the family dog. That is, if you could even call the vomit-inducing remains of your old life a family.

After the first four hours of your dreaming, once you had been asleep for thirty hours, you began to regain the ability to move your body. This was in the middle of your fifth nightmare, so of course you subconsciously took up the opportunity to squirm around. You began to shift and turn slightly, softly groaning in an obviously distressed tone. You, while sleeping, were grabbing onto anything that was in reach. In the dream, you were squeezing things to try to ease the pain you were feeling at present moment. So, outside of your dream world, you were grasping things such as the back of the couch and Lucifer’s face, more specifically his cheek. He smiled slightly, thinking that you were just being tired and cute. However, when you began to mumble about how you were being hurt and how you needed whatever happened to be going on at the moment to stop, that’s when he got worried. Extremely worried. Lucifer’s concern grew along with the rise of the level of noise that your voice held. So, when you began shouting about whatever you were dreaming of, your husband started shaking you in an attempt to snap you out of it. He could tell that you were really in need of help, as your voice hadn’t gotten that loud since the day that you left Hell. There must be something really wrong if you, who at the moment was emotionally impaired, were getting this noisy.

“Y/N, wake up,” he instructed softly, grabbing hold of your arm and shaking you back and forth. There was no response. You stayed asleep.

The Morning Star kept trying and trying again and again to wake his darling from her bad dream, but with no successes. Each and every time he tried to wake you, Lucifer got louder and shook you more roughly. It wasn’t that he was angry at you for not coming back into reality. It was just that he thought you’d be able to hear him if he screamed his head off.

Eventually, Lucifer’s plan worked. You woke up, dazed and confused after Satan’s sixth attempt.

“Huh?” you asked groggily, picking your head up off of Lucifer’s chest, a line of drool coming from your mouth. You gazed up at Lucifer with half lidded eyes. You were visibly shaking, but there was no sign of impending tears.

“Are you okay, honey?” Lucifer questioned gently, wiping your mouth off.

Your body knocked against Luci’s, and once they were fully opened, he could see a fear in your eyes, but even still, you nodded.

“Fine,” you stated, your voice slightly breaking. You didn’t want to talk about it, you didn’t want to think about it, and you certainly didn’t want to dream about it. It was, even though you understood why it happened, at least the part about your childhood, anyway, a bit hard to work through and process.

Lucifer wrapped his arms around you, holding you a bit tighter than he had been doing before. He rubbed your back a little and kissed your forehead softly. Your husband knew that you were lying. He didn’t like it when you lied. That just made it harder for him to help you. He knew that you were hurting, frightened. He could tell by your trembles that you weren’t fine. You weren’t alright, and there were physical signs.

“No,” he disagreed quietly, “Y/N, you’re not fine. You’re not okay. You’re not alright. You’re shaking, on the verge of tears, and you’re clinging to me like a scared puppy.”

You hadn’t realized that you had grabbed onto Lucifer and were holding him like there wouldn’t be a tomorrow.

“Now tell me what’s wrong, sweetheart. What were you dreaming about?” the man, who was currently blond, asked. “Talk to me. I’m all ears.”

You shook your head and sighed shakily. You didn’t want to talk about it.

Lucifer exhaled a breath of air, opening his mouth next. “If you talk about it, you’ll feel better.”

“Lucifer I really… I really don’t want to.”

Your spouse took a deep breath before speaking again. He gets angry when he can’t help you, and right now, he didn’t want to blow a gasket in your face. He didn’t ever want that. So, he breathed. In and out, in and out, in and out. Simple.

Once Lucifer was calm again, and only then, is when he spoke once more. This time, he began to guess about what the subject of your dream may have been. Being able to pull from prior experience and knowledge, Luci was right on the first try. Actually, he was correct in all of the guesses that came out. The only reason he guessed more than once was to be able to cover all of his bases.

“Was it… about your mother? Your father? Crowley? Hell?”

You nodded quietly at every possible answer that Lucifer spat out. All of them.

“Which one were you having when I woke you up?”

“Crowley,” you answered quietly, hiding your face in Lucifer’s chest. “I-It was scary, babe,” you admitted. Might as well if he was going to pull it out of you anyway.

Lucifer rubbed slow circles in your back while simultaneously running his fingers through your [color of your hair] hair.

“You want to tell me what happened in it?”

Lucifer understood how your dreams worked. He knew that they played out like flashbacks. Every single one of any nightmares you have or have had in the past are recollections of your past. They were down to the tee, and the dreams about Crowley in particular contained information that Lucifer needed to know to get him back for what he had done to you.

“No, Luc. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Sweetie, c’mon. Remember, when you were like nineteen, and you were going to therapy for the childhood memories? It helped to talk about it then, right? You could talk it out, get your emotions in the open? It helped to talk the memories out with Cara, right? Well, talk to me. Let it out.”

“He told me… He said…”

You didn’t want to do this. It just wasn’t worth it.

Lucifer looked into those beautiful eyes of yours and patiently waited. He just… waited for you to speak. It wasn’t a “tell me now” stare. It was more of a “I’m waiting, honeybun. Whenever you’re ready. I’m listening, and my undivided attention goes to you” stare.

It took you a moment, maybe even five minutes, but eventually, you mustered up the strength and the courage to tell Lucifer what happened in your nightmare.

“H-He… He told me, firstly, that I’d never see you again. That really scared me, but I guess it was a lie because here I am, and you are too. He told me that you were suffering, that you were in pain. Is that true, Luci?” You looked up at Lucifer with the “ _please don’t tell me they hurt you_ ” eyes. You took enough pain and endured enough brutality for both you **and** your husband. “Then, he said some more stuff and hit me and kicked me lots.”

As you continued to explain what happened in the dream, what Crowley had done to you during that particular torture session, you broke down. It started out with a single fallen tear, but you were soon bawling so hard that you could hardly speak anymore, and the only thing that came out was incoherent blubbering.

With the arrival of one of the very few noises that shattered the Devil’s usually stone heart, he stood and began rocking you in his big, strong arms. You clung to his grey v-neck tee shirt as if your life, once again, depended on an iron grip of it.

“Shh, shh. Baby girl, I’m right here. I’m right here for you, he can’t get you anymore. Nobody can, not again. Never again, I swear.”

Nothing Lucifer said or did could calm you down. You were simply unable to be lulled. He tried rocking you. He tried talking to you. He tried kissing your cheeks, and your forehead, and your nose. Nothing. Worked. So, that left Lucifer with one option and one option only. His last-ditch effort. His last resort.

“Alright, my gorgeous, beautiful human. You’re going to have excuse me if Nick’s singing voice isn’t up to par. I’m trying here, okay? I’m really trying.”

Then, Lucifer proceeded to sing you, in his vessel’s surprisingly good singing voice, “Therapy” by All Time Low, your favorite band in the whole entire world. Your husband knew the entire thing by heart, as you used to play it so often that you wore out two physical copies of the album listening to it over and over. Lucifer had grown tired of the song by about the fiftieth time hearing it, but he never said anything. You always got so excited to put it on, and the smile on your face when the first note came from the stereo was so adorable that he didn't have the heart to tell you to turn it off. So, he would just grin at you and sing along, and he would do it every time, because he loved to see you happy.   

“Ahem,” Lucifer coughed, clearing his throat. “Five…four…three…two…” Sing. “My ship went down in a sea of sound. When I woke up alone I had everything: a handful of moments I wished I could change and a tongue like a nightmare that cut like a blade. In a city of fools, I was careful and cool, but they tore me apart like a hurricane...- I'm flesh and bone, I'm a rolling stone, and the experts say I'm delirious. Give me therapy. I'm a walking travesty, but I'm smiling at everything. Therapy... you were never a friend to me, and you can take back your misery... Arrogant boy, love yourself so no one has to. They're better off without you. They're better off without you. Arrogant boy, cause a scene like you're supposed to. They'll fall asleep without you. You're lucky if your memory remains. Give me therapy. I'm a walking travesty, but I'm smiling at everything. Therapy... you were never a friend to me, and you can take back your misery...-" 

By the middle of the song, you had stopped bawling and your grip on the material that was covering his upper half relented. By the end, your head was rested on Lucifer’s chest once more and you were quiet, content. Success.

“All better, doll?” asked your ever-so loving life partner in the most careful, concerned voice you had ever heard in your entire forty years on this Earth. Thank Lucifer, literally, that you didn’t actually reach age forty, by the way. Forever twenty-five, baby. A blessing billions would kill for.

You nodded a slight bit against your Luci, acknowledging him to the affirmative.

Luc smiled a small amount down at you and nodded back.

“Good. Now, darling, can you do me the pleasure of looking at me? Just for a minute, and then if you want, you can hide that stunning face of yours again.”

Obviously, you obeyed and peeked up at your better half, waiting for what he wanted to say or do to come out.

“Listen to me, Y/N,” said Luci, “Listen to me good. I will get that bastard. With what I’m going to do to him, he’ll be sobbing and begging for his mommy before I even get on a roll. I will get vengeance for what happened to you, okay? I swear. Torturing Crowley and executing every single dirty little creation of mine that hurt you is at the top of my list. It is second only to taking care of you and making sure that you get better. I promise. They won’t be free forever.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry that I've taken so long to update this! I was just trying to figure out a way to do the rest of the chapters justice. Thanks for being so patient, and I hope you enjoy this installment!

You stood quietly in the doorway of the room of your home that functioned as an office space, wearing nothing but a shirt of Lucifer's and a hair tie to hold your long locks in a loose ponytail. The shirt hung off of your undeniably unusually thin frame like a tent, big enough to hold two of you, three on its best day. You were still gaining weight back from your time in the Underworld, and the garment that only used to reach your knees reflected that fact.

Your head rested against the frame of the structure, one arm tucked under your forehead while the other lazily hung down by your side.

Dark circles were still prominent under your dead eyes, the light long gone from them. Although you had been sleeping better as of the past week or so, thanks to extra-strength sleeping pills that were given to you by your ever faithful husband after a period of riding it out to see if your insomnia improved. Eventually, it had become too depressing to watch you slink around the house half dead and he decided that it was time to take a different approach.

While you were still extremely tired due to the fact that you were not finished with the transitional period of getting back on the right sleeping pattern that you were currently experiencing, you felt considerably less sluggish than you had when you weren't sleeping even a single second every night. As far as you were concerned, the pills were working wonders. Nobody could get better medication anywhere in the world than what a dark overlord could provide, you could certainly say that.

While you as an individual were completely silent except for the sounds of your soft breaths, the room itself was not void of noise. Instead, it was animated by the sight and audibility of Lucifer scribbling away on a sheet or a hundred of paper, sitting in a desk chair, his head hovering over the tabletop of oakwood. He wrote quickly and with abandon for a moment or two, but would then suddenly stop and think for a long minute before repeating the process over again. He had been sitting with those papers and that number two pencil for hours by that point, scribbling, stopping, then starting once more on an endless loop. It had been happening for a couple of days; he would be sitting at that desk, writing, writing, and writing even more for practically immeasurable amounts of time, or what felt like to you, until you finally managed to pry him up from it and out of the confinement of those four walls for what seemed like not enough minutes in order for him to spend time away from whatever he had been working so tirelessly at over the weekend.

Unfortunately for your curious mind, you had no clue as to what it was; he wouldn't divulge that information to you. Not just yet, anyway, he kept telling you. In due time.

_In due time, my love._

Those words were burned into your brain and came back to the front of your mind every time that you saw Lucifer working on his secret project without him even having to say it again. _In due time, my love. In due time._ It was, if you were being honest, starting to become your least favorite phrase in the entire universe. What could his efforts be about? What could be jotted down on those papers, scribbled by that pencil? Not knowing what was written down on those sheets was beginning to drive you a bit more mad than you already were. It could be a number of things. It could be **anything** , really. What was your husband hiding from you? What was so secret that he couldn't even share it with his favorite human?

You might not have known for sure, but you did have one very plausible guess as to the answer. Maybe, just maybe, you thought, Lucifer was working on his plans to carry out his revenge, to seek justice for what happened to you during the time that he was out of commission.  

Every time you saw him at that desk, you thought back to the words that he had said to you not long after your return to Earth, back to the promise that he had made you.

_“Listen to me good. I will get that bastard. With what I’m going to do to him, he’ll be sobbing and begging for his mommy before I even get on a roll. I will get vengeance for what happened to you, okay? I swear. Torturing Crowley and executing every single dirty little creation of mine that hurt you is at the top of my list. It is second only to taking care of you and making sure that you get better. I promise. They won’t be free forever.”_

The more you thought about it, the more you realized that he was trying his hardest to abide by every single one of the angles of his promise. While it was true that he had been working on the plans for hours on end, he never worked on them when he thought that you were awake, but instead, he only sat down to make a bit of progress when he believed that you had drifted off for the night or, in the case of the daytime, for a nap. He never abandoned you when you were in need of him.

Not only that, but Lucifer hadn't started until two days before, approximately just over a month after your liberation from your personal Hell and your return home. He had spent that month doing nothing but taking care of you, not even thinking about leaving your side for more than five minutes while you were conscious and aware of his presence or absence of such, and even then, it was always to get you something that you needed or wanted.

Truth be told, he had, up until a recent point, been afraid to leave you. What if something went wrong and his absence, even if it was temporary until he came rushing into the room, made you even more afraid than you would have been if he had been right there next to you to calm you down? What if you needed him and you thought that he had left you again? That he had abandoned you? You had been, and still were, in such a fragile state that even the smallest things could bring your very structure crashing down to the ground. He couldn't have that and neither could you. Neither of you would like the added stress, and Lucifer wasn't positive that you could even handle any more than you already had. So, because taking care of you had been made and forever would be his top priority, he only sat down to work when he was confident that he had the free time at his disposal. Although revenge was sweet and justice was necessary, you deserved better than somebody who would leave you in the dust due to a grievance.

But even though Lucifer tried only to work when he didn't need to watch over you, he sometimes miscalculated the moments that he needed to slip back into the bed before you noticed that he wasn't by your side. Luckily for the both of you, it hadn't yet resulted in a heart racing, palms sweating, head pounding, full blown panic, but your waking up alone had happened a couple of times over the weekend.

This, however, at the current moment, was one of those times. You had fallen asleep in your shared bedroom abut three hours before at noon, but had woken up in order to use the bathroom and maybe retrieve a glass of water from the downstairs kitchen. It was just supposed to serve as a nap, of course, so you had only taken about a quarter of a single sleeping pill, that of which wore off just in time.

You had already done the two things that you had set out to do, though, and had simply gone in search of your husband after that. Hopefully, it wouldn't take you too long to get him to come back to bed with you. That wasn't to say that he ever refused you when he was asked, or even ever sent you away with a, "Just give me one more minute, my love". He would set you up on the couch in the space, covering you with a blanket and giving you a kiss on the forehead, then he would go back to work for a little while, or at least tried, while you asked him to go back to the room with you, the papers that lie on the desk "conveniently" just out of your line of sight. You hoped that all you'd have to do was request it of him once, but certainly weren't expecting for it to happen. Realistically, you could hope that three attempts would be the end of it.

This wasn't due to the fact that he was making you second priority, because that was the furthest thing from the truth. It was just that sometimes, Lucifer had an idea that he was in the middle of fleshing out and he would rather finish before doing anything else if the situation wasn't dire. Besides, what you wanted was to be with him, and a few minutes on the couch with him next to you was still being with him. Granted, it wasn't as close as you might have liked, but it was just the way it needed to be sometimes. The last thing he needed was for you to see the plans that he was working on; you had made so much progress and come so far in your recovery in an astoundingly short time considering the circumstances, and he didn't want to wash that all away. He couldn't tell you about his plans before he knew that you could handle them, and even then, it would likely be a watered down version of them. You would probably just know the basics and nothing more in order to protect you. You had never cared to hear about his devil-related business to begin with, and if there was ever a time where that was more true, it was now. He knew that you couldn't help being curious about his workings at the moment, but he was also sure that you wouldn't want to hear or be able to handle much when it did come time to inform you of his intentions.

"Lucifer?" you asked quietly, effectively piercing through the non-chatter filled area with the name.

Upon hearing your voice, Lucifer set his pencil down on his papers and looked up, turning his rolling chair to face you. After all, it was rude not to look at somebody when they spoke, especially when that somebody was his baby girl.

"Hey there, sunshine," Lucifer greeted softly, giving you a gentle smile. It was one that was warm and welcoming, one that was completely unlike ones that he gave anybody else. Those smiles were cold and menacing, barely smiles at all. Those were just pure evil, formed only to make those that received them more uneasy and sick to their stomachs than they already were. The ones that he gave you were full of nothing but love, such a rarity for the one that was the global face and blame of any and all evil. "I didn't expect you to wake up for a few more minutes. I'm sorry I wasn't in the room when you got up. Did you have a nice nap, honey? Did you have any of those nightmares?"

The answer that he was expecting was an answer to the negative effect; if you had had a nightmare, he would have been able to hear it from Alaska. His name would be screamed out so loudly that he would have to be deaf to ignore the sound of it. Your spouse was asking the question more as a courtesy rather than anything else, just in case of the very small, minuscule really, chance that you had a silent nightmare that he had missed. If that was the case, well, he **had**  to know about it.

While he was prepared for an answer that was the opposite of what he anticipated, he got an answer that continued the trend of his almost always knowing about your nightmares.

"No, I didn't, thankfully. I just got up to use the bathroom and get something to drink. How long have you been down here, Luc?" you inquired, answering his question and keeping the conversation going with yet another.

"About an hour," he replied, folding his hands into one another, intertwining his fingers, and resting the organs on his stomach. "I didn't want to move until I was sure you were asleep. I was going to go back up there in like five minutes, I swear, I just... I thought I had more time. I'm sorry that you had to wake up to an empty bed, my darling. Are you done sleeping now? Or are you still tired? Do you want to go back upstairs?"

In response to this, you simply shook your head and stood up straight, running a hand over your face. "Not if I have to go alone. Can you come up there with me?"

Lucifer simply sighed at your request. Of course, he was happy to make a compromise, but he couldn't meet you all the way at the moment. He was trying his damnedest to juggle all of his promises at once, but it was harder than he thought it to be when he made them.

You needed him **all of the time**. You wanted to be with him constantly, around the clock. You never wanted him to leave you, and hated when he walked out of the room for even two minutes to go grab you a box of cookies from the kitchen pantry. This clinginess, however hindering to the second part of his pact, was understandable. Of **course**  you didn't want to be left alone after almost half a millennia of being tortured mercilessly and completely void of any contact whatsoever with the love of your life. There was no way that any sane human being would be even remotely okay in regards to their mental health after that happened to them. Simply because you were the queen of the world that it happened to you in didn't mean that you were the exception to the rule. He understood that fully and completely. But while Lucifer was happy to oblige to the needs of the one and only human that he didn't feel a raging flame of hate and disdain for, your desire to be with him all twenty-four hours of every single day made it difficult for him to carry out every piece of his promise, as he needed to get away from you in order to think of and draw up his plans for revenge. The last thing he wanted to do was make them in front of you or breathe a word of them to you. You didn't need to see them or hear about them. All they were were blueprints to inflict pain on somebody. You had seen and experienced enough of that in your more than three decades of life, and he knew that you certainly didn't need to see any more of it. He was only planning to give you the bareboned rundown of things when the appropriate time came, and he didn't need you to learn any of that information until the time came to execute his plans. The less time that the undertaking was hanging over your head, the better. Lucifer wanted the smallest amount of time possible to elapse between when you heard about what he was going to do to the moment that you heard him utter the magic fix-all words, "Everything is taken care of. I handled it, and it's all over with."

It was true that the beings that your spouse would be inflicting the aforementioned pain on were not people. They were not people, or humans, or creatures that were deserving of any form of mercy whatsoever. All they were were hateful, vile, disgusting **monsters**  with no regard for anybody but themselves, nothing more than **things** with no souls. They had done wrong by you, wrong **to**  you, and they needed to pay the price for their actions. Believe it when it was said that the cost for plaguing the sweetest girl in the universe with a mind full of inescapable darkness was a rather expensive piper. While the transgression was previously unprecedented, while it had never been an issue or a payment that was required up until recently, the archangel had always known in his heart of hearts that that particular sin would come along with the heaviest punishment imaginable. He'd rather not have the wrongdoing repeated ever again for the rest of eternity, and coming down harsher than ever and living up to his name was the only way to ensure that.

But for the current moment, he was going to be as loving and caring a husband as possible, because that was who he was to you and that was who it was a privilege to be. You needed him and under no circumstances was he going to let you down; you had already been let down countless times in your life, whether in small ways or in grand ones, and it was one of his missions in life not to be the type to do you wrong in that same way if he could help it.

"How about you lie down on the couch for a few minutes while I finish something up, love? I'll tuck you into it,"  the Morning Star offered as he stood from his desk and made his way over to you, attempting to place his hands on your arms in order to guide you to the couch that found its place by the far wall of the room.

At this, you stayed right where you were instead of allowing your spouse to relocate you.

"No, Luci. I want you to come upstairs and lie down **with me**. I wanna cuddle in the bed. Please?" you asked, careful not to make your voice too forceful or demanding. You knew that Lucifer would never do anything to hurt you- the thought would never even cross his mind-, that he held you in the highest regard and loved you more than words could say, and that he, judging by his previous words, will be doing unthinkable things to the last things that caused you harm as soon as he can decide what punishment was worthy of them, but even so, as of late, you had been extra wary of sounding bossy. All partiality to and adoration for you put aside, Lucifer was possibly the strongest being in all of the universe, second only to God himself. The plain truth of it was that he **was**  entirely capable of doing anything that he pleased **whenever**  he pleased, if he pleased, and that nothing and nobody could stand in his way if such an occasion happened to present itself. In your damaged state, you did not want to test your boundaries nor his (admittedly unwiltering, at least where you were concerned) patience. You were not of entirely rational mind as of recently, and you just wanted to be on the safer side when it came to the Devil. Frankly, nobody could blame you. After all, you had just been tortured mercilessly for more than a handful of lifetimes, and while it would be no picnic to go back to that, it was certainly not a situation where you would want to upgrade to someone with a more skilled hand at the craft.

"Sweetheart, I just need to put a few finishing details on something, and it will only take a couple of moments. Couldn't you please just bear with me for that long? You can be right on the couch. I won't even leave your sight, I promise," he replied, keeping his tone even as he asked once again for the small compromise, the **fair**  compromise, that would allow him to hold up both ends of his deal and not neglect either of his agreements. He held onto a hope that you would at least recognize the effort that he was making to work things out in a way that would please both of you, but also understood that the couch may not be good enough for you right then and that in any case, your comfort came first. He would certainly try once or twice to get you to accept his proposal so that he could keep everything in a certain balance, but would not be too set in his ways of getting you to agree with him, because he had zero expectation of that. It was simply worth it to try.

While the effort and his intentions were good, you did not exactly care for your husband's suggestion. It was lonely enough to wake up in an empty bed, without someone who had previously been lying beside you and now you wanted just one simple thing: to be held.

So, at his attempts to reason with you, you sighed quietly. You knew, objectively, that you had been extra needy since your return to Earth, and that Lucifer spent practically every waking hour with you, which in his case was all of the hours. He definitely deserved some time off.

Despite this, when Lucifer suggested that you wait for him on the couch, irrational questions found themselves front and center in your mind. Did he not **want**  to hold you? Was he annoyed that you needed so much attention and care? Was he getting tired of you?

One half of your brain outright refused to entertain these claims. Of **course**  he wanted to hold you, and there was no chance that he would **ever**  be tired of you. He loved you too much for that! The thoughts running through your head were just too silly to be taken seriously. Right?

Not according to the other half of your brain.

As far as that side was concerned, Lucifer had grown to resent the fact that you constantly required his care. You were bothersome, a burden to him, and he couldn't wait for the day that you could fall asleep without him.

The second half of your brain was exactly right on its latter account, but for completely different reasons than what it believed. It was true that your husband hoped that the day when you could fall asleep alone if the situation called for it would come and come soon, it was not because he was tired of you or because he didn't love you as much or stopped loving you at all. The day that happened would be the day that he showed mercy to an undeserving soul. The reason that he hoped for this was simple: he wanted you to feel better, to **get**  better. He didn't want you to suffer anymore; it was a very painful sight to witness. He wanted you to be the smiley, upbeat, ray of sunshine that you had been before the, to put it lightly, traumatizing incident occurred. He wanted you to laugh at his cheesy jokes and he wanted you to beg him to get out of bed with you to go play with water guns in the yard like the overgrown five year old you are. He wanted you to roll your eyes when he made a klutzy attempt at being seductive and he wanted you to request that he make his "famous" cinnamon roll pancakes for you at the most obscure hour because you just needed them " **right now** , Luc, please!". He wanted you to be the girl he fell in love with, the girl that he loves more and more each day that passes. Yes, you were still the same girl that you've always been, technically speaking, but all of the life that you once had had been sucked out of you and he hated that that had happened. He wanted you back the way that you once were. So no, it wasn't because he loved you any less or because he had grown tired of taking care of you. He'd gladly do that any day of any week of any month of any year without any questions asked. It was just that he wanted to see you **happy**  again. He wanted you to be **you**  again. In fact, that was all he wanted. It was the most important thing.

While all of those things were entirely true, the two halves of your brain were at war with each other over the subject of him loving or not loving you and they could not seem to agree on what to tell your mouth to say next. Did you ask Lucifer once again to please just come cuddle because you wanted to go back to sleep and needed his company? Did you sit on the couch as he had asked and wait it out, knowing that he likely wouldn't be very long? Did you try to find a compromise that was swayed more to your side, but still catered to him?

After a moment of heavily considering the third option you had, you remembered that you had already tried that the previous day when this exact same situation had gone down; you asked Lucifer if you could sit on his lap. That way, you could be close to him and touching his body, but he could still work on his project. He had refused that suggestion, noting that then you would be able to peek at his papers and see what he was doing, telling you that he couldn't have that. So, your only options were to either continue to nag him and risk him finding you even more annoying than he already did, as explained by the second side of your brain, or you could do as he asked and wait for him, leaving you cold and singular, void of his touch? Because, as the second side of your brain pointed out to the first in order to taunt it, he could be **hours** , and you'd be left by yourself on the couch because he didn't care about you as much as he did before you were tainted and made dirty by the inhabitants of the Underworld, did he? You were nothing but irreparably filthy. Why would he want **you**?

So, your brain went back and forth with itself, wrestling every possible point and pulling you in every conceivable direction. Ask him. Don't ask him. Wait for him. Don't wait for him. Comply. Don't comply. Do it. Don't do it. Do. Don't. Do. Don't. Do. Don't. Do.-

As your fragile mind tried to make itself up and decide what to do and say to your husband, it went into overdrive and everything became all too much for you to handle. The next thing you knew, you felt your eyes prick with tears before you burst out into a full-on sob, a flood of emotion slamming into you like a brick wall, causing your knees to weaken and before you could realize what was happening, you collapsed under yourself and onto the office space's hardwood floor, body shaking and salty liquid flowing freely from their ducts.


	4. Chapter 4

Tears streamed rapidly down your face, falling from your eyes one after another with not even a second between them. It was a steady flow, quick and constant, showing no signs of stopping or even so much as slowing down.

Your trembling caused you to knock repeatedly against the floor, your weight thumping over and over on the cherry floorboards.

Of course, you did not remain on the floor for very long, as Lucifer made quick work of scooping you up into his arms and removing you from it.  

“Hey, hey, hey,” he whispered, holding you close to his chest. “Shh. Calm down. There’s no need to cry. Everything’s okay. Shh. Don’t cry. Shh. Shh.”

As if it had become second nature, when your husband lifted you from the floor, you wrapped your arms around his neck in order to cling tightly to him before burying your face in his shoulder and continuing to sob.

Just as you had done on the hardwood, you shook against your spouse, your body hitting his again and again. You did not so much as even try to control it because you were too focused on bawling to care.

“I… I juh-just... I just wanted you to lay down with muh-me!” you wailed as he swayed back and forth, rocking you in his arms in an attempt to soothe you.

“I know, honey,” he hummed softly in agreement. “I know. I know. I just needed a few minutes. You could’ve laid down right where I could see you. I would have set up the couch,” he reminded, bringing a hand up to cradle your head.

“B-But I wanted to lay down with you **now**!” you exclaimed just the slightest bit more forcefully, only so that the emphasis that you were putting on your words could be noted. “I didn’t w-wanna wait.”

Lucifer sighed at this, beginning to gently stroke your hair from top to bottom in slow motions. He shouldn’t have even suggested that you wait on the couch. You clearly needed him. He should have just dropped everything and gone right then and there. After all, you came first. He should have been telling himself that instead of trying to juggle his responsibilities to your disadvantage.

You still needed him. You had always needed him, yes, but you especially needed him nowadays. He needed to be available at the drop of a hat. He couldn’t put you off like that. What had be been thinking?!

“I know that, dollface. I should have listened,” the Morning Star cooed, beginning to take a leisurely stroll around the room while keeping a hold on you. The walking motion always seemed to help calm you down. Even if it didn’t do the trick completely, it made major improvements to your state of being. Because of this, he was always quick to resort to it. “I should have just taken you upstairs to cuddle. I know. I was being stupid. I’m so sorry. I should have listened. I should have listened… I know, babe. I’m sorry.”

Though the Devil hated to sound like a broken record, he would say anything important as many times as he had to to get you to understand, and if anything was important, it was the words that he was currently speaking.

“I know, I know. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. We can go up there right now, okay? We’ll go up there and lie down. I’ll stay as long as you want me to. I won’t leave, even when you’re asleep again. I promise. Okay? Sound good?”

“Y-Ye-Yes,” you choked out, nestling your face into the hollow of the vessel’s neck. All that all you could see was darkness as you breathed in an ever-comforting natural scent that you had come to know and love. Despite the fact that you were upset, you felt like you could be flying when you inhaled it. “O-Oh-Okay.”  

“Okay,” he echoed softly, exiting the office space and completely deserting what laid on his desk in favor of carrying you to the bedroom.

The swaying motion that Lucifer’s steps brought was a great help in reducing your state of distress. By the time you had arrived in the upstairs bedroom, your sobbing had simmered down to a few sniffles, stray tears, and shaky breathing.

Because your face was still hidden, you had to rely on other senses to infer what was going on. The main sense, of course, was touch. Feeling. What was Lucifer **doing**?

You could tell that he had reached the bedroom by the fact that he had stopped walking, and you knew that he was pulling the covers back when you felt him leaning over.

When you sensed that he was going to put you down, you held onto his neck all the tighter, refusing to let him go.

Forget what he had told you about coming up to bed with you.

Forget what he had told you about not leaving you again.

Forget what he had told you about being sorry.

Forget his assurances.

Forget the fact that he had comforted you.

Forget his **promises**.

Forget the fact that he had given you his word.

He was putting you down!

Though it was irrational, though he had promised he’d stay, and though you had heard it with your own two ears, you feared that Lucifer was just going to put you down, tuck you in, and abandon you. Why else would he be trying to let you go?

In addition to strengthening your grip, your eyes shot open wider than they ever had when you were with him.

“W-Where are you going?” you practically whimpered, looking up at your spouse with an expression of pure fear.

Lucifer quirked an eyebrow at this, obviously confused. However, he still gathered you back up completely into his grip, knowing that that was what he needed to do even without being told.

“I’m not going anywhere, darling. What makes you think I’d being going somewhere?” After all, he said that he would stay. He had sworn it, in fact, and a man (or, in Lucifer’s particular case, an archangel) was only as good as his word.

“Y-You… You were gonna put me down and then walk out,” you explained carefully, the Devil’s perplexed features causing you to second guess yourself. If he didn’t even know what you thought he was going to do, could he have really been planning it?

Lucifer simply shook his head at this, giving you a gentle squeeze in an attempt at reassurance.

“I absolutely was not,” he returned. “I promised that I would stay and get cozy. It’s just that it’s a very awkward and difficult way to get into bed while I’m still holding you,” and then, a bit more softly, “You know that. I’ve always put you down before I get into the bed. I haven’t walked out on you without telling you yet, have I?”

“No”, you responded quietly. You knew that Lucifer was not telling you “the way that things have always been” in order to guilt you, and you tried your hardest to make the side of your brain that was telling you that his goal was such shut up. He would never pull a guilt trip on you. It wasn’t how he was. “I… I just got scared. I’m sorry.” Frankly, though, you were starting to feel a bit silly for thinking that he was going to leave you in the first place.

“There’s no need to be sorry, darling. I understand. You don’t have to apologize,” he assured, pushing a few stray strands of hair behind your ear before moving his hand to your scalp to smooth it back comfortingly. “Now, I’m going to put you down, but I promise I’ll just be a moment before I’m lying with you, okay? I won’t leave.” Maybe if he warned you, Lucifer thought, the lack of touch that you felt wouldn’t bring panic.

You nodded at this, your head brushing the Devil’s shoulder repeatedly in the process. Though you didn’t know that was why he did it, Lucifer was right. Giving you a heads up was instrumental in calming your nerves.

So, as he carefully bent over once again and placed you on the mattress, you weren’t the least bit reluctant to detach your arms from his neck, because you knew that before you could have your next thought, he would be lying right next to you, and he was.

Not even a moment later, the Morning Star was pulling your body close, tangling you up with him so that there was practically no escape. While the phrase, “no escape” would typically chill you to the bone, in this case, it sent you soaring over the moon. You couldn’t get away even if you wanted to because he was holding you and he was **there**  and there was no chance in the world that he was going to leave because he had **sworn**.

Once this had been accomplished, Lucifer began to gently run two of his fingers up and down as well as across the arm of yours that was in immediate reach, the motion just something that had become an absentminded reflex when you were curled up with one another.

As he was laying on his back, you were able to rest your head on the blond’s chest. The feeling of it had always been one of your favorite things. It was solid. Immovable. It was strong and stable and that made you feel safe. If anything, as of late, all you wanted was to feel safe.

A few minutes passed in a comfortable silence, Lucifer stroking your arm and soon, your back, and you content to hear the sound of his heart beating in his chest. There was no need for words to fill the quiet; the environment in and of itself was enough to be securing. But regardless, it was eventually broken by the sound of Lucifer softly calling your name.

“Y/N?” he asked in a tone that told you that he was hesitant to even open his mouth in the first place. Things had **just**  calmed down. You had stopped crying and everything was fine. He should just leave that alone. But he couldn’t, and while he knew that, he still hated himself for popping the bubble that the room was currently floating in. “Can you please tell me what that was down in the office? Why did you just start crying like that, sweetheart?”

Lucifer hated to ask, “do you want to?”. That left you room to reply with a negative and attempt to leave the subject at that. He needed answers. So, instead, he simply asked politely, but a bit more firmly. It was the best way to find out what was going on.  
Honestly, Lucifer was astounded by what had happened on the first floor. How had you gone from requesting cuddles to being a sobbing puddle on the ground? He knew that you were fragile, but **that**  fragile? It had to be something else that had caused you to react in the way that you did.

“I dunno…” you replied, turning your head just slightly so that you could hide your face in the t-shirt that clothed Lucifer’s torso, hoping that the motion wouldn’t incriminate you for telling a fib.

“You do know,” Luci informed consciously, using his free hand to start fiddling with strands of your hair. “You do know, and you can tell me, whatever it is. I **want**  you to tell me.”

Even with Lucifer’s reassurances of the fact that what you had to say wouldn’t be an imposition if you said it, you still found yourself wary of the idea of explaining. If you told Lucifer that you had been afraid of him lately, and that your mind was telling you that he didn’t love you anymore, would he get angry? Would he raise his voice to you? Would he growl and be offended that you had said such preposterous things? Would he leave you even though he had told you a million times over that nothing would make him do that or even **think**  about doing it?

But, again, you had two trains of thought. Would he get angry if you **didn’t**  tell him? Would he yell because you were just so **stupid**  that you couldn’t follow an instruction as simple as telling him what had happened? Would he call you ugly names because he couldn’t find any other words to express what an **idiot** / you were? Would he be mad either way?

No, you thought. Of course not. Your Luci would never be so mean, would never say those things. Ugly words weren’t even in his vocabulary where you were concerned. And he would never, ever yell at you. Not again. Not after the last time. He had assured you of that. He wouldn’t act in a way you had grown accustomed to with the previous man in your life, but you couldn’t help but worry, and your brain couldn’t help but remind you of all of the awful possibilities that could come of the situation.

“Please, darling?” he asked even more gently, removing his hand from your back only to slightly readjust and hug you tighter. You needed to know that he was there to help you, that he was there because he loved you. “It was a pretty big… I hate to call it a breakdown, but…” His voice faltered for just a moment. “All I want to do is make it better. I can’t fix anything if you don’t tell me what happened, though.”

Technically, the tail end of Lucifer’s response was a lie. He **could**  fix the problem without you telling him. He didn’t **need**  you to tell him **anything**  to figure it out. All he had to do was read your mind. However, the Devil preferred not to have to do that. He had no problem with it when it was anybody else, but when it came to his beautiful wife, he thought it to be an invasion of privacy and chose to only keep the option as a last resort.

“I… I’m nervous to tell you,” you admitted meekly, not lifting your head to look the celestial being in the eyes. “I don’t want you to get angry and yell at me.”

Even with the confession, Lucifer did not make any move to have you meet his gaze; he knew your hiding your face was partly due to nerves and did not want to heighten those. Instead, he simply had to rely on the inflection of his tone to be reassuring.

“Sweetheart,” he began with a small sigh, making sure that he didn’t come across as annoyed, “that’s not going to happen. I promised you that I wouldn’t, and you know I don’t break my promises, right? I mean, I might be a **fallen**  angel, but I’m morally upstanding as far as those go when you’re in question. Even if you tell me and I don’t like it, I promise that I will not yell at you. I know that yelling upsets you and I don’t want to do **anything**  that will upset you if I can help it. Was what happened downstairs something that I did? Is that it? Do you not want to tell me because you think I’ll get mad that you’re calling out my mistake?”

Lucifer really hoped that that was not the case. No, not the part where he would have made a mistake because oh, he can do no wrong. That had never been true. He hoped so because he hated the thought that he could have done something to make you so upset that you couldn’t even stand on your own two feet due to the fact that you were crying so hard. He hated the thought that he could have **hurt**  you.

“No...” you answered at this, giving a slight shake of your head. His words were beginning to make you feel the slightest bit more at ease. “I know that you wouldn’t do that stuff…” You did, truthfully. The dark part of your brain, though, just wouldn’t shut up about the possibility of it happening. It was becoming harder and harder to lock said part out of your head. “You love me.”

“That’s right,” he echoed. “I love you so much, and I wouldn’t dare yell at you, or hit you, or be anything but nice to you, even if you tell me what was happening in your head downstairs and I don’t like it. But I really need to know, okay? I need to know so I can do my job and take care of you. And sunshine, you know as well as I do that I can read your mind and get the information without you even having to open your mouth, but I really don’t want to have to do that. I want to be respectful of you and not do that, and I want to hear it in your own words from your own mouth. So please, please tell me because I’m asking you nicely and this is something that I really need to know.”

Luckily, the part of your brain that trusted Lucifer and what he told you implicitly won out over the evil part, the part that was telling you that everything he was saying was deceit and spoken in order to trap and trick you. That part, of course, was a new development and had only formed upon your return from Hell. Before that, although it had taken a very long time, you had no doubts that Lucifer would always treat you with kindness. But you were just grateful that today, even though there was that part of your brain that you wished would go away, your rational, non-self deprecating pieces were the most convincing.

“My… My brain was arguing with me,” you began slowly, giving the tiniest cough to clear your throat. “Some of my brain was telling me that you loved me and that I wasn’t bothering you, but that you were just trying to get everything that you promised done, but other parts of my brain told me that I was a burden to you and that you wished I didn’t need you anymore, plus a bunch of other mean stuff. I was trying to decide if I should keep asking you to come or not, but my head kept going back and forth and I…”

“You got overwhelmed,” Lucifer supplied softly, providing you with your unsaid words. You simply nodded at this in silent agreement. Though you couldn’t find those exact words, it was what had happened.

“I couldn’t… I couldn’t take it and I didn’t mean to, but I just started crying,” you finished. “I’m sorry.”

Your husband just shook his head, adjusting himself slightly so that he could plant a gentle kiss to your temple. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, my love. It’s not your fault. You’ve been under a lot of stress lately, what with what you went through and trying to adjust to being back on Earth. It’s completely understandable that your mind is going a bit haywire, and it’s completely understandable that you’re having trouble dealing with situations and working through your emotions. It is. It’s normal. What you went through was traumatic, and frankly, I would be worried if you **weren’t**  having trouble. Okay? So it’s nothing to be sorry for. Understood?”

“Yeah,” you replied quietly, giving a small sigh.

To your dismay, Lucifer was not yet ready to drop the subject.

“Good. But Y/N? I think we need to talk about what your brain was telling you. I think it’s affecting the way you act with me.”  

Immediately, you saw this as a bad idea. Judging by how kind and understanding Lucifer had been with you, how much he had been taking care of you, you knew that he was likely to be upset if he found out that in spite of all of his loving words and actions, you were terrified of crossing him. Rightfully, you had a feeling that admitting that was where the conversation was going to head. So, you tried your hardest to think of a way to get out of it.

Knowing you didn’t have much time before your pause became suspicious, you sputtered out the first excuse that came to mind.

“Luci, I’d rather not talk about this right now. All of the crying made me tired.” This, of course, wasn’t technically a lie. In fact, it was one hundred percent truthful. You always felt worn out after you had finished sobbing. “I just wanna go back to sleep.”

“Hon, I really think now is best,” Lucifer replied. “It’s always easier to talk about something when we’ve already been talking. It’s harder to start a new conversation later on. I can tell that something has really been bothering you, and I was hoping it was something that would resolve itself, but it’s just been getting worse. What’s on your mind?”

“It’s not a big deal,” you tried next, a more feeble defense than your former attempt and certainly less honest. Naturally, the archangel was able to see right through it.

“Darling, ever since you started getting more sleep, you’ve been acting weird around me. It’s almost like you don’t want to be around me anymore. You haven’t been talking to me as much and when you do, it’s not a lot of words and it’s never about anything much. I know that downstairs today wasn’t something that I did wrong, but did I do something else to cause you to act this way? Did I say something to upset you?”

“No,” you answered genuinely. No. It wasn’t anything that Lucifer had said or done, nor was it anything that he had implied or thought. You just wished that telling him that didn’t mean that you would have to say that it was because of who he was as a being, that your problem was fundamentally **him**  as a whole. You were afraid that you didn’t have the heart, but you knew that he wouldn't stop his questioning at that, and were not the least bit surprised when he opened his mouth again.

“Then what is it, Y/N? Help me to help you. I can tell that this is really something that’s troubling you. So if it’s not me…”

“It is you,” you blurted, a very, **very**  brief moment of courage coming to you before vanishing as fast as it had appeared.

In return, you were gifted with a very puzzled expression, but due to your obscured vision, you were shielded from it and had to rely on your spouse’s tone of voice to tell that he was confused.

“I thought you said it wasn’t anything that I did?” Lucifer asked unsurely, his hold on you loosening noticeably. Suddenly, he wasn’t very certain of whether or not you wanted to be held.

“It wasn’t anything that you did, Lucifer. It’s just… It’s just you,” you repeated, not clarifying anything for the Devil in the least.

“All right, dear, you’re going to have to elaborate for me a little bit. How can it be me if it wasn’t anything I did?” His inquiry was patient, and he didn’t sound the least bit annoyed with the fact that you were being so vague, due to which your brain credited points to the positively-thinking side of itself. He loved you enough to give you your time to speak and not rush you because he was impatient. He loved you enough to gently coax you instead of forcefully shove you to answering. He **loved**  you.

Having those thoughts in your mind made it even harder for you to say what you needed to say. He wouldn’t hurt you. How could you say this and hurt him?

But even still, you pushed yourself to swallow thickly and choke down the massive lump in your throat. Maybe if you were delicate... Maybe if you worded it properly… Maybe if you were **careful** , everything would be okay.

But of **course** , that didn’t happen. Of **course**  you messed it up. Of course, you rambled on to get your words out and over and done with instead of calculating them carefully to soften the blow, even if only marginally.

Of course, instead of telling Lucifer that you were just a bit timid when it came to someone that was, not naturally, but by proxy, a demon after being brutalized by demons for so long, you said that you were terrified of pissing the almighty Lucifer off because he had the power to treat you even **worse**.

Of course, instead of saying that you had just been trying to be cautious, you said that you didn’t want to get on his bad side.

Of course, instead of admitting that you were just afraid of being hurt again, regardless of who you’d be getting hurt by, you let slip that you were worried about the nearly unlimited power that the rogue angel possessed and how that could be used against you in the event that you had a big misstep.

But of course, Lucifer reacted in the only way he ever would, regardless of whether he was displeased or not (which, in this case, he wasn’t. How could he be?): with grace and respect.

“Hey, sweetheart, slow down,” he hushed, tightening his grip once more in a way that was just enough to show protectiveness, but certainly not enough to display non-existent anger. “Take a breath. You’re going to run out of air.” He was pretty sure that you had just spat out at **least**  three hundred words in under a minute. “Just breathe, baby. Just breathe.”

What? Why wasn’t he upset? Why wasn't he offended that you had just dirtied all of his hard work in getting you to trust him?

That was because, well, you’d done no such thing.

Almost as if it had become instinct by that point, Lucifer assured, “I'm mad at you. Just take a deep breath. Everything's fine.”

Luckily, Lucifer knew you well and understood that those were the words you needed to hear, so they resulted in you feeling secure enough to do as asked.

“Good,” he gently praised once you had some fresh air in your lungs and you had untensed considerably. “Now listen to me. I understand why it's hard for you to be around someone of my… kind right now, why it's hard to be around the **creator** of the awful, horrible, disgusting things that hurt you, and those scared feelings are completely valid. I know that it'll take you time to recover, and I know that you might not ever be exactly the same again, but that's okay. I'll love you no less. I know those things. But I need you to know something too. I have never, would never, and **will**  never use my abilities for anything but good when you're concerned. I will only ever use them to help, protect, or make you happy. I will **never**  use them to cause you harm or do something that’s not in your best interest. You're the only human I've ever loved, [your nickname]. There'll never come a day when I don't treat you like it. It’s okay if it takes you some time to get used to that again, because I know that a lot of times in your life, you’ve been told something and the exact opposite has happened, but my words and actions have always aligned with you, and I swear that won’t stop even if you think it will. I’ll always be honest with you.”

On one hand, Lucifer had never failed you in that department before, so what reason would he have to fail you now? On the other, it was hard to trust him nonetheless. But he already knew that. You didn’t need to repeat it again. So, instead, you replied quietly by mumbling, “You’re the only Devil I’ve ever loved, so I think we’re even.”

Lucifer was almost sure that you had some special magical power that made him smile because before he could tell, another was on his face. “Sometimes I wonder how a human can be so cute. Rest, now, gorgeous girl.”

* * *

Hours had passed since Lucifer had provided you with your most recent sleep aid and you were still out like a light, something for which he was grateful.

The Morning Star had not left the bed that you had always referred to as “ours”, but really, was only used for its given purpose by yourself. Not only that, but he had no plans to leave it. He was fine staying right where he was, because it was where he was needed, and revenge was of minuscule importance compared to what really mattered: taking care of you.

He knew how “damaged” you were when he married you, just how “irreparably broken” the person that he was due to wed had become over the years. But he didn’t care. He loved you for you, flaws and all. After all, you weren’t the only one. He was **nothing**  if not flawed. But that was okay. You could be flawed together.

That’s what love was all about, right?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys! Just a heads up, this final chapter is more of an epilogue and it is set about three months after chapter four.

The house was quiet, much quieter than you had grown accustomed to or were comfortable with. The space was void of even the slightest fillings such as footsteps on hardwood or Lucifer’s pencil scratching repeatedly on the sheets of paper in front of him. It was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, completely empty, and even when you had tried to fill the silence with music or a blaring television set, you still felt alone. Very, very alone.

Lucifer had been gone for two days now, though it felt like an eternity. He had left only after warding the house as thoroughly as possible, ensuring your safety in the best way that he knew how when being right by your side to protect you himself wasn't an option. He had warded against everything under the sun, put down salt lines, and installed brand new locks on every window and door (because you were human; you still had fears of other humans even though you knew that there was much worse in existence. You wanted to get violently raped and slain by an intruder of your own variety about just as much as you wanted to be torn to shreds by a hellhound). He had made it his personal mission to become certain that nothing was getting into that house and nothing was getting out of it, either. While he had to **make it**  so that nothing could enter to hurt you, all it took to make sure that you wouldn't leave the safety of what he had done was tell you to stay put. He knew that you would listen to him, that you would obey his orders. They were always in your best interest, and you knew that. You also knew that what he told you was especially important **now**.   

It was important now that he was gone. Now that you didn't know when he was going to be back. Now that neither of you knew how long things would take. Now that the feeling of having his arms wrapped around you felt like a centuries-old memory. Now that you struggled to recall what it felt like to have him right there to keep you safe because even though a normal wife would be used to her husband being off on a business trip and could easily distract herself from missing him, the days without **your**  husband dragged on like millennia. Now, it was a case of life and death. Now, if you disobeyed, you could lose the sensation of his touch forever, and considering that you had gotten it back not all that long ago, you were in no rush to let it slip through your grasp if you could prevent it.

So, you sat idly in the deafening silence, trying to let your mind wander to a place where it didn't feel as if Lucifer had left at all. Maybe, if you found such a paradise, you could stay there until the time came when you didn't have to anymore, until you had the real thing back.

You refused to accept the possibility that he wouldn't return. You refused to entertain the idea that he **wouldn't**  contact you so that he could walk right back through the front door the second he was finished with what had to be done. Of course, the warding prevented him from entering, so, when he was ready, he would need your help to gain entry once more. But he **would**  gain entry. You knew it. He had **always**  come back to you, no matter what errand he had to run. He was always **okay**. He hadn't failed to return yet, and he never would. That was probably one of the only things that you had faith in anymore.

Though you attempted to force your brain to take you away to the place where everything was perfect, to the vault that stored memories of every single happy moment that you had ever shared with the love of your life, each time, you failed miserably. Each time, nothing would come up. Every time, every **single**  time, you drew blanks. Blank after blank after **fucking**  blank. Why couldn't you **think**?!

That, without a doubt, had something to do with the fact that you hadn't slept in as long as Lucifer had been away. Though you had been making great strides in your recovery, sleeping without Lucifer was not yet a realistic possibility. As a result of this reality, you were so sleep deprived after more than forty-eight hours of being conscious that your brain function had drastically lessened and you had become unable to form very complex thoughts or recall abstract concepts such as memories.

It was in that moment (that was, truthfully, among many others) that you were disappointed and even frustrated that with your immortality did not yet come the ability to never tire. As you were human, your functions would remain as such until you reached a chronological age in which no human could possibly live to under natural circumstances. Then and only then would you stop requiring sleep, food, and other forms of nourishment. It wasn't that you didn't think that this was a fair trade. Of course it was. It was **more**  than fair. You got to spend the rest of eternity, literally, with the man that you loved, and your only consequence was being a bit sleepy from time to time. You would forever be grateful for that monumental gift. After all, what was eighty or ninety more years when you had the rest of time at your disposal? When put into perspective, it was practically just a few months.

But right now, because of one of the very few (in your case) drawbacks of eternal life, you couldn't whisk yourself away to the place that you most needed to be. The best that you could hope for was that it wouldn't be long before that was no longer necessary, as your only other option, dreaming of him, was taken away by the fact that the entire reason that you couldn't produce such a place was **because**  you were unable to sleep. If it was impossible for you to sleep in the bed alone even when the Morning Star was still in the house to look out for danger, it certainly had no chance of happening when he was you didn't even know how many miles away from you. So, the best that you could do was sit and wait. Just sit and wait thoughtlessly, staring at the ceiling and off into the distance, **allowing**  your mind to blank, and hoping that you would zone out long enough for it to make a substantial difference to the analog clock that found its place ticking away to a steady rhythm on the living room wall.

* * *

Many hours passed from sunrise, each one seeming a step closer to, but yet somehow still galaxies away from the moment that you would see Lucifer again. You had no way of knowing when he would be back until you heard the sound of your text tone telling you that he was at the front door, so you had no way to keep track of progress.

Once again, you tried to pass the seconds by listening to music or watching television because you didn't have the brainpower for much else. Of course, though, you were bound to the, admittedly extensive, titles that Netflix offered. Your spouse had disconnected the cable and network television features before he left, knowing that you would be tempted to check the news so that you could assess the damage that had been done as a result of his actions. He wanted to eliminate the choice to look at something that would give you information that you and he both knew that you didn't want to hear or see instead of leaving it to taunt you, and so, logically,  he disconnected it. You had been promised that you'd get it back once the storm of his escapades had blown over and was no longer a breaking report, once it was no longer a report at all, but not a moment before. You didn't want it back before then.

So, you put on your favorite show, one that you had already seen the episodes of thousands of times before, so that you were enjoying what you were watching, but didn't feel as if you had to pay much attention to pick up the details and plots that you already knew like the back of your hand. You just stared lifelessly at the screen, feeling much like a zombie that had risen from a death of a thousand years but still somehow lacked rest and energy. A multitude of colors and shapes moved about on the screen, voices doing a job of making you feel just the least bit less vulnerable, but not doing much else to make the house feel like a home. Only Lucifer could do that.

Even still, it was nice to have something to keep you occupied. The show kept you so occupied, in fact, that paired with the truth of your brain being slow at the current point in time, you almost missed the piercing vibration of your cell phone that alerted you of a text message. But when it registered in your brain that the device had buzzed, you jumped slightly as you had been startled by it.

However, when you checked the information of the sender, you were a thousand different kinds of relieved. Surrounded by multiple hearts and the prettiest flower emojis that the phone’s operating system had to offer, the name read "LuciBear". The content of the message, if anything, made you even more glad that it had come through. It read: _Sweetheart, I'm right outside the front door. I want you to get up, break all of the_ wardings _that effect me, then unlock the door. **Don't**  open it. Just unlock it and then go sit down in the living room._

Upon reading those words, you couldn't help but want to burst. Lucifer was back! He was texting you and he wanted to come in because he was back and he was **safe**. He was **okay**. You hadn't felt as happy as you were in the current moment in a very long time.

Of course, though, you didn't waste time doing what had been asked of you. You didn't want to make your spouse wait.

So, once you got up, you made your way to the kitchen and took a knife from the utensil block; it wasn't one that was very big, but that didn't matter. All that was important was that it was sharp enough to scrape the paint off of the floors.

After you had procured your disabling device of choice, you went around and broke the seals of each of the symbols that you were instructed to. Before you knew it, you had gotten them all, and you were off to unlock the door for your husband. When the door was as it should be, you made your way back to the couch and sat down once again before setting the knife down beside you and picking up your phone. Unlocking it, you opened the texting application that had come with the phone and tapped on Lucifer's text string before typing your response.

 _The_ wardings _are broken and the door's unlocked. I'm on the living room couch._

Once you sent the reply, you had time for a thought to cross your mind: Why had Lucifer asked that you simply unlock the door? Why did he ask for you to keep it closed? Was there something outside that he didn't want you to see? Was there wreckage?

No. That was impossible. You hadn't heard anything happen. How could destruction have occurred if there had been no noise?

While you were thinking logically, you knew that sometimes, logic failed to apply. After all, **demons** , and **monsters** , and **Satan himself**  were all real. Everything that you thought was just tall tales actually existed, and in the literal sense. Monsters were no longer awful, horrible **people**  in human skins to you. No. They were **things** , not just humans who figuratively had no soul. If that was the case, it was by no means far-fetched that whatever had happened in the area had been made silent by some form of magic. If that was what had happened, Lucifer was simply trying to shield you from seeing it because he **could**  see it, and you didn't decide to rise again so that you could investigate any further.

Because of this choice, your only option was to sit on the couch and wait. To sit and wait until the door had been opened and closed again and you were in no danger of seeing whatever was beyond the four walls of your home.

Luckily, you weren't kept waiting for very long, as each second that passed seemed to drag on for a lifetime and too many of them would drive you to the brink of insanity. Within thirty seconds, Lucifer had entered the house and made his way to the living room.

When you saw him, your body began to work overtime, using strength that it didn't have to send blood flowing through your veins at warp speed so that it could get to your heart and make it beat a thousand miles a minute, causing you to worry that it would burst right out of your chest without even a moment's notice if it thumped just the slightest bit harder.

You were so overwhelmed with a level of joy that you hadn't felt in far too long, though, that it took you much longer than it should have to notice how roughed up the archangel's vessel had become. All you saw was that he was alive and **there**  and seemingly happy to see you, too.

"Hey, Luc," you greeted, sounding way too sad to be happy. In fact, you sounded like you were going to cry. The truth was, however, that it was a good almost-in-tears. It was **because**  you were happy. Thankfully, Lucifer could tell. It was one of the times when your crying so much over the past couple of months came in handy; he knew what your sad voice sounded like.

When you stood, you wrapped your arms around the Devil and hugged him as tightly as you could possibly manage, which wasn't as tight as you would have liked. It wasn't tight enough to express how glad you were to see him, but such a tiny girl could only do so much, right?

Lucifer was glad to see you too, of course. After he had lost you for so long, even the smallest amount of time being away from you was hard to handle. Even after just a few weeks in the timeline of Hell, which was nothing compared to the length of his capture, he couldn't wait to be back home. That said, his aching body did not appreciate the, however well intentioned, harsh physical contact that you had initiated.

Even though angels, especially archangels, had a much higher threshold of pain than their human counterparts, the injuries that Lucifer had sustained while defending your honor were substantial, to say the least, and he was in a great deal of pain.

Although, to his credit, he handled the situation with grace and class, gently removing your body from that of his vessel's and giving you a half smile, half smirk when you parted. It was his classic smile, sly, gorgeous, and as knee-weakening as a grin ever could be.

“Hey, dollface. Miss me?” he asked, though it wasn’t without effort to sound unaffected by his wounds. It was one thing to **be**  in pain, but it was a whole other to cry like a bitch about it. Lucifer didn’t want to complain. That was one of the last things that you needed. So, he had to try his best to sound like he was okay, even if he knew that his physical appearance would point you to rightfully believe the contrary.

As expected, you did not take well to seeing for yourself the shape that your spouse was in. Yes, you were grateful that he had even returned home and yes, you were grateful that he had done so in a relatively timely manner, but those things did not negate the anger and worry that flooded you once you **really**  laid eyes on Lucifer for the first time in two days.

“Oh my God!” you exclaimed, gasping as a surge of energy hit you. “What happened to you?! Are you in pain?! Come here, come to the bathroom; I’ll clean you up. Those cuts and bruises are-!” Appalling? Horrendous? So awful that they were hard to look at, but even harder to look away from? Yeah, he knew. Even if it wasn’t the most obvious reaction in the history of the universe, Lucifer had known you long enough to anticipate what you were going to say and know what you were thinking, even without actually reading your thoughts. You were just close enough to him for that to be inevitable.

“Woah, woah. Hey, now. Slow down, sweetheart,” the angel commanded, settling his hands on your shoulders and giving them a slight squeeze as he cut your rant off in its tracks. “Take a breath. You have the rest of your life to speak, and it’s a pretty damn long one, so there’s no need to rush. Listen to me. I’m fine. I just need some rest and then I can regenerate my… I can fix Nick up with my grace just as soon as I’m rested.” Hell if he didn’t need that rest. It was taking every last ounce of strength that he had left just to stay upright. “You don’t need to worry about anything, my love. It’s my job to worry about you, remember? Not the other way around. But you… Honey, you look beat. You need to go lie down. C’mon, we can rest together.”

You just shook your head at this, and if you were any less exhausted, you were sure that you’d laugh at how comical your expression must have looked in that moment. That was probably one of the stupidest things that you had ever heard your husband say. It was just as much your job to take care of him as it was his job to take care of you! That’s what the deal was. It wasn’t fair to let one person do all of the work, especially when the only reason the injured person was injured in the first place was because he was trying to right the wrong done to the other person.

“That’s not how it works, Luc. It’s my job to take care of you, too. I know you don’t need as much taking care of as I do, and that it’s hard for you to remember that you need it too sometimes, but you **do**  have those same needs, honey. So let me do my job and take care of you. Please.”

At this, Lucifer just sighed, knowing that there was no way that he was going to convince you otherwise. You could be very persistent when you needed to be, and he wasn’t going to win when you were persistent. By now, he had the experience to know when you were going to be persistent if he continued, so he decided to cut out the middleman of the back and forth and simply go straight to agreeing.

“Fine,” he caved. “All right. You can play doctor. **But**  only on one condition,” he explained, holding up an index finger for emphasis.

“Yes?” you asked, lazily quirking an eyebrow just enough for Lucifer to tell that you had raised it.

“After you’re done, you and I go to bed and lie down together. No arguments. No complaints. No staying awake with me.”

Honestly, that sounded less like a hardship and more like Heaven. You not only needed sleep, but you’d do almost anything to get it. It had only been forty-eight hours since the last time you had drifted off, yes, but that was about thirty-four more than you could handle. Not only that, but Lucifer would be lying down with you, not only making you feel safe, but also getting the rest that he needed to heal. So, you didn’t hesitate to agree.

“Deal,” you vocalized, reaching up to **very**  gently press your lips against Lucifer’s. Kissing was your version of “let’s shake on it”. “Now, off to the bathroom, then,” you continued, gingerly taking your husband’s hand. “Lean on me if you need to. Just try not to put your entire weight on me because I am very tiny and I’m no use to you if I’m flattened like a-”

“I know, princess. I wouldn’t. On my good days, I can balance and lift you with one hand. That’s how tiny you are. I’d crush you if I put this weight on you.”

“Oh, you shush,” you ordered, even though you smiled. “That’s only because you’re **Lucifer**  and you have magic powers. If you were human, lifting me would feel like lifting a cow. Your ability to lift me with one hand has nothing to do with my weight.”

“You’re not a cow. I mean, I could probably turn you **into**  a cow if you wanted, but-” Your husband’s tone of voice told you that he was teasing, likely in an attempt to put you at ease. Even when he was hurting, he would try to make you feel comfortable.

“No, no, no,” you giggled, shaking your head. “Don’t you ever dare. You’ll be covered in milk because don’t you think for a second that I wouldn’t put my utters to good use.”

“Spraying me with your utters? Kinky,” he snorted.

You just shook your head once again at this, gesturing to the toilet; somehow, during your little chat, you had made it all the way to the bathroom.

“Sit,” you said, helping Lucifer slowly lower himself down onto the seat before taking a few steps back toward the door so that you could retrieve items that you needed from the medicine cabinet.

Once you had everything ready to go on the vanity, you set out patching the archangel in front of you up.

As you assessed the damages done, using antiseptic spray and bandages where needed and occasionally removing a tattered piece of clothing that he wore to get a better picture of what had been hurt, you asked, “So, do you want to tell me about what happened?”

This, of course, was your way of asking if everything had been taken care of without sounding… well, like you had been sounding for months. For **once** , things needed to be about you taking care of Lucifer and **not**  being the needy one, and you weren’t going to ruin that by using words that’d make you emotional.

“No,” the Morning Star declined. “I don’t.” You didn’t need the details. You had finally been getting better, a lot better, actually, and he didn’t want to ruin that. He didn’t want to knock you back down to the first ladder rung in your recovery after you had climbed so far. “But I do want to tell you that everything has been taken care of and nobody will ever even think about doing that to you ever again.”

Very, very briefly as he said this, his eyes flashed red, displaying anger, but he wrangled that in faster than you could blink. Everything had been handled, now. There was no need to outwardly show resentment in your presence.

“Good,” you replied softly, dabbing a cut on his cheek with a wet washcloth to clean off dried blood. You had done it enough times to know how to be efficient. “I’m glad. Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure,” he responded. And it really was. Taking care of you had always brought him joy, but striking back at somebody who had wronged a loved one of his made him ecstatic.

“All right, you’re all done,” you said after a few more minutes of silence, giving him a quick once over to be sure.

“That was fast,” he noted, and you gave a swift nod in return.

“I’ve had practice.” Way too much of it.

Lucifer nodded back and stood from his seat, looking down at his, now bare, torso, to find himself indeed cleaned up and bandaged, but with… Hello Kitty adhesives?

“You’re doing this just to torture me, aren’t you, sweetheart?” he laughed heartily, though grabbing his ribcage after the fact. Note to self: It hurt to laugh.

“It’s all we have,” you shrugged, but beamed at the angel anyway. It was still a funny sight to see, and anybody with a sense of humor would react the same way. The Ruler of the Underworld covered in bandages meant for six year olds who still think that they’re fairy princesses? Yes, please!

“I’m glad you find this so hilarious, darling,” he sighed exasperatedly with a roll of his eyes.

“Oh, you know you love me. No need to huff.” Even though you had to admit that Luci was cute when he was pouty.

“Now, that I do know. I love you more than you’ll ever be able to fathom,” he agreed, standing and pulling you close to him so that he could finally escort you to bed.

And that was true. He loved you. Lucifer **loved** you. He loved you more than the moon and the stars, more than the first snowfall of the winter season, and more than the most beautiful sunset that had ever graced the sky. He loved you more than he ever thought that he could love **anybody** , never mind a **human**. And if loving you meant late night watergun fights in the backyard, getting up at three o’clock in the morning to make stacks upon stacks of cinnamon roll pancakes, and being subjected to being covered in Hello Kitty bandages when you “played doctor”, then so be it. He had never had a love like you, and he’d fight to keep it like he had never fought for anything before, even if he had to make a fool of himself in the process to do it. **You were more than worth it**.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap for Since U Been Gone! Thank you to all of my wonderful readers that took the time to enjoy this story. I really appreciate all of the love, support, and amazing feedback you all have given me over the past year, and I truly hope you enjoyed the conclusion!


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